1) Love
For starters, I want you to know without a shadow of a doubt that I love your daddy with all of my heart! He is the only person that I want to spend the rest of my life with. I cannot imagine a moment of this life without him by my side. Being married to to each other (for 6 1/2 years now) has been easy and felt like the most natural thing. We prepared for marriage to be hard but it has not proven to be a challenge for us. Sure, we have disagreements and we get upset with each other, but those moments never last long. Most of our time we are just happy to be together and when we're apart throughout the day, we can't wait until it is time to be together again. We are in the truest form of love that I know.

3) Trust
Being in true love also means being vulnerable. To let go and love someone else, you have to trust that they won't hurt you. Trust is such an important component to our relationship. We are always 100% open with each others lives. I share everything with your daddy and he shares everything with me. We are constantly communicating with each other! There are no private areas or secrets to be kept. No hidden passwords on phones or computers. Everything we have is open to the other person. Not that this is at all a key to a trusting relationship, but these are a few examples of area's that we maintain trust with one another. A good marriage is built on the foundation of 100% honesty and openness and vulnerability with one another.

2) Commitment
On the other side of the circle of trust is a constant commitment to one another. If your daddy is putting his trust in me, than I have to stay committed with deserving that trust. Relationships fall apart when the commitment is broken which causes trust to fail. Commitment comes in a lot of forms. Not only do we have to stay committed and not stray in our relationship, but there are hundreds of ways we have committed to one another. I have committed to being a stay at home mother. Which means we've had to make budget cuts and I can't stray from the commitment I made to watch my spending (I sure to like to shop!). Your daddy is committed to providing for his family. That is just one of many, many examples I could have of various areas of commitment. Another little side area of our commitment I want to discuss is is our commitment to constantly work on and communicate in our marriage. Since the day we decided we wanted to spend our life together, we have been committed to making our marriage the best it could be. We try to communicate with one another constantly and work through any disagreement as soon as possible. We never want to find that place where marriage feels like work. Sure, we've had our moments where it isn't all sunshine and unicorns but we always, without the road getting too difficult, work our way back to a very happy place together.

Even though we made the decision to get married at the very young age of 18, we prepared. We never for a moment took the decision for granted. We knew that it was the biggest decision of our lives. There is so much more to a marriage than just being in love. It takes a lot of trust and a constant commitment and maybe even some sacrifice here and there. I already pray over all of you that you will make good choices and find a Godly spouse someday. I can only hope and pray that your marriage is as satisfying and happy as ours is!